Asian Film Awards 2013: nominations spread the love around region

While it’s almost illegal these days to programme a festival or awards bash without an Iranian film (and the AFA doesn’t break that rule), Iraqi Kurdistan isn’t often featured in such announcements. Here it has a day in the sun, with Bahman Ghobadi’s Rhino Season picking up four nominations.

Doing the announcement honours were the HK Film Festival’s Chair and Executive Director, Messrs Wilfred Wong and Roger Garcia, with support from local producers Raymond Chow and Nansun Shi, plus distributors Golden Scene’s Winnie Tsang and Fortissimo’s Michael Werner.

Local starpower was provided by the winner of last year’s AFA People’s Choice Actor, Andy Lau, who was himself announced as this year’s jury president.

The 70 nominee slots across the AFA’s 14 categories were filled by 30 films from nine territories. Over half the films nominated will compete in multiple categories.

South Korea now leads the way with 16 nominations, and is the only country with a nomination in all 14 categories. Japan has 13. Both countries will hope those will deliver an improvement on the big fat zero they converted to gongs at 2012’s AFA. Hosts Hong Kong already know they’re looking at a quiet night, with two solo nominations and a half share of two more for co-productions with mainland China.

Six of the Korean nominations are for one title, Jong-bin Yun’s Nameless Gangster. Korea’s most popular film last year, The Thieves, picks up four nods along with the distinction of being the only film to compete with itself, having secured two nods in the Supporting Actress category.

Nameless Gangster shares the most nods for a single title with LOU Ye’s Mystery, although only the latter is nominated for Best Film and Best Director (despite LOU having removed his name from the film after Chinese censors imposed cuts on the film).

Four of the five films nominated for Best Film are also nominated for Best Director. Abbas Kiarostami (Like Someone In Love) nudges out Johnnie To (Drug War) in the Director nominations.

In the 2012 line-up, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation was a safe bet once nominations were announced. It had added an Oscar by the time the AFA took place and took four wins from five nods.

This year there is no clear favourite among the nominees for either Best Picture or Director, although another Korean film, Kim Ki-Duk’s Pieta, has probably received the most recognition internationally to date. It took four awards at Venice including the Golden Lion and has three nods here, including for Best Film and Director.

In addition to the juried awards, the AFA presents vox pop Actor and Actress Awards and a number of special presentations, the awardees named ahead of the ceremony. The New Talent and Lifetime Achievement Awards neatly bookend career arcs, although the AFA – in its seventh edition in 2013 – is far too young to have yet had to consider the same person for both awards.

The final non-juried award is for the Highest-Grossing Asian Film. Given the rapid growth in screens in mainland China, limited access for foreign films and the fact that the country has now overtaken Japan in overall box office earnings, the odds are stacked heavily in favour of a mainland title taking the gong.

Last year Wen Jiang’s Let the Bullets Fly duly obliged. Although the official announcement has yet to be made, this year’s winner is confidently expected to be XU Zheng’s road comedy Lost in Thailand which has taken US$144 million and was still on release at the end of 2012.

Japan’s best earner was Umizaru 4 with US$91.3 million. while Korea’s The Thieves (which also became that country’s highest-grossing film of all time), took US$82.5 million. No other country in Asia had a local film earn over US$10 million.

The Asian Film Awards holds its ceremony Monday 18 March in Hong Kong as part of the territory’s Entertainment Expo.